Masterclass: German Sentence Structure

Ordnung muss sein

You should have come across the main principles of the German sentence construction on your path to B1. Let's quickly review a few of them here.

The verb is king

The German sentence order heavily relies on the position of the verb. The verb can be in the following positions:

Position 01

  • Y/N-questions: Bringst du mir bitte ein Bier?
  • Imperatives: Bring mir bitte ein Bier!
  • Exclamations: Dachte ich es mir doch! (not mentioned in the video above)



Position 02

  • Normal sentences: Ich bringe dir ein Bier.
  • W-questions: Wann bringst du mir (endlich) mein Bier?



End position

  • Nebensätze (sG learners are familiar with my concept of "pushers"): Weil ich kein Bier mehr habe.
  • If there's an auxiliary verb on position II: Du sollst (=aux) mir ein Bier bringen. Aux. verbs are modal verbs, haben, sein, werden, würden, sehen, hören, lassen and very few others which we can ignore.

Once the verb is clear, you should be able to identify the other components in a sentence. The main components are:

  1. The subject (always in Nominativ)
  2. The direct object (always in Akkusativ)
  3. The indirect object (always in Dativ)
  4. A prepositional supplement: a word group that starts with a preposition and end with a noun e.g. an der Wand.

There are other components like e.g. adverbs (e.g. heute), Genitiv-objects or numbers (zwei, drei etc.) Those you'll figure out as you go without having to put much effort into learning them.



The subject

The subject is heavily in love with the verb. Depending on the subject, the verb gets a different ending. A couple of examples. Note the different verb-ending for each subject below:

Ich bring.e

Du bring.st

Es bring.t

It is usually very easy to identify the subject. Simply ask: Who is doing the verb? E.g. if in the sentence:

Ich bring.e dir ein Bier.

you ask: Wer bringt ein Bier? You can only answer with "ich" et voila, that's your subject.

As the subject is deeply in love with the verb, it is in 99% of the cases either directly next to the verb. Usually in front of it but at times also right behind it. Whenever you have to write a sentence in German, you stick to the sentence order: I (=subject) love (=verb) you (=object). At least until you feel that you have gotten a grip on how to juggle the subject safely.

There is no real difference in meaning between the following two sentences:

  1. Ich esse gerne Spaghetti. and
  2. Spaghetti esse ich gerne.

Number two would put more emphasis on the Spaghetti though. Pay attention whenever you read a German text and try to develop a feeling for the way authors play with the position of the subject.

Subjects love bullies

Whenever there's a pusher (i.e. Nebensatz-Konjunktion like e.g. weil), the subject has to pick a favorite: verb or pusher. And it always decides to stick next to the pusher. One example:

Weil ich gerne Spaghetti esse.